Pages

Sep 7, 2010

Robert Bauval on King Tut's DNA

In this Red Ice Radio interview, Robert Bauval weighs in the controversy over Tutankhamun's possible Western European ancestry.

Despite the refusal of the Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, to release any DNA results which might indicate the racial ancestry of Pharaoh Tutankhamen, the leaked results reveal that King Tut’s DNA is a 99.6 percent match with Western European Y chromosomes.

The DNA test results were inadvertently revealed on a Discovery Channel TV documentary filmed with Hawass’s permission — but it seems as if the Egyptian failed to spot the giveaway part of the documentary which revealed the test results.

Bauval puts Hawass's recalcitrance in some context explaining the nationalistic attitudes that are very much a part of his make-up. Also discussed, Hawass's bizarre foray into the embarrassing excesses of reality television with the series Chasing Mummies.

"Do you not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is an image of heaven, or, to speak more exactly, in Egypt all the operations of the powers which rule and work in heaven have been transferred to earth below? Nay, it should rather be said that the whole Kosmos dwells in this our land as in its sanctuary." - from the Hermetica